Hamilton looked forward to the next Congressional term with no
delusions. He polished his armour until it was fit to blind his
adversaries, tested the temper of every weapon, sharpened every blade,
arranged them for immediate availment. In spite of the absorbing and
disconcerting interests of the summer, he had followed in thought the
mental processes of his enemies, kept a sharp eye out for their new
methods of aggression. Themselves had had no more intimate knowledge of
their astonishment, humiliation, and impotent fury at the successive
victories of the invulnerable Secretary of the Treasury, than had
Hamilton himself. He knew that they had confidently hoped to beat him by
their combined strength and unremitting industry, and by the growing
power of their party, before the finish of the preceding term. The
Federalists no longer had their former majority in Congress upon all
questions, for many of the men who, under that title, had been devoted
adherents of the Constitution, were become alarmed at the constant talk
of the monarchical tendencies of the Government, of the centralizing
aristocratic measures of the Secretary of the Treasury, at the
"unrepublican" formalities and elegance of Washington's "Court," at his
triumphal progresses through the country, and at the enormous one-man
power as exhibited in the person of Hamilton. Upon these minds
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had worked with unremitting subtlety. It
was not so much that the early Federalists wished to see Hamilton
dragged from his lofty position, for they admired him, and were willing
to acknowledge his services to the country; but that the idea grew
within them that he must be properly checked, lest they suddenly find
themselves subjects again. They realized that they had been running to
him for advice upon every matter, great and insignificant, since the new
Congress began its sittings, and that they had adopted the greater part
of his counsels without question; they believed that Hamilton was
becoming the Congress as he already was the Administration; and
overlooked the fact that legislative authority as against executive had
no such powerful supporter as the Secretary of the Treasury. But it was
not an era when men reasoned as exhaustively as they might have done.
They were terrified by bogies, and the blood rarely was out of their
heads. "Monarchism must be checked," and Hamilton for some months past
had watched the rapid welding of the old anti-Federalists and the timid
Federalists into what was shortly to be known, for a time, as the
Republican party. That Jefferson had been at work all summer, as during
the previous term, with his subtle, insinuating, and convincing pen, he
well knew, and for what the examples of such men as Jefferson and
Madison counted--taking their stand on the high ground of stemming the
menace to personal liberties. The Republican party was to be stronger
far than the old anti-Federal, for it was to be a direct and constant
appeal to the controlling passion of man, vanity; and Hamilton believed
that did it obtain the reins of power too early in the history of the
Nation, confusion, if not anarchy, would result: not only was it too
soon to try new experiments, diametrically opposed to those now in
operation, but, under the tutelage of Jefferson, the party was in favour
of vesting more power in the masses. Hamilton had no belief in
entrusting power to any man or body of men that had not brains,
education, and a developed reasoning capacity. He was a Republican but
not a Democrat. He recognized, long before the rival party saw their
mistake in nomenclature, that this Jefferson school marked the
degeneracy of republicanism into democracy. Knowing how absurd and
unfounded was all the hysterical talk about monarchism, and that time
would vindicate the first Administration and its party as Republican in
its very essence, he watched with deep, and often with impersonal,
uneasiness the growth of a party which would denationalize the
government, scatter its forces, and interpret the Constitution in a
fashion not intended by the most protesting of its framers. Hamilton had
in an extraordinary degree the faculty which Spencer calls
representativeness; but there were some things he could not foresee, and
one was that when the Republicans insinuated themselves to power they
would rest on their laurels, let play the inherent conservatism of man,
and gladly accept the goods the Federal party had provided them. The
three men who wrote and harangued and intrigued against Hamilton for
years, were to govern as had they been the humblest of Hamiltonians. But
this their great antagonist was in unblest ignorance of, for he, too,
reasoned in the heat and height and thick of the fray; and he made
himself ready to dispute every inch of the ground, checkmate every move,
force Jefferson into retirement, and invigorate and encourage his own
ranks. The majority in both Houses was still Federal, if diminished, and
he determined that it should remain so.

As early as October his watching eye caught the first flash in the
sunlight of a new blade in the enemies' armoury. One Freneau had come to
town. He had some reputation as a writer of squibs and verses, and
Hamilton knew him to be a political hireling utterly without principle.
When, therefore, he heard incidentally that this man had lately been in
correspondence and conference with the Virginian junta, and particularly
that he had been "persuaded by his old friend Madison to settle in
Philadelphia," had received an appointment as translating clerk in the
Department of State, and purposed to start a newspaper called the
National Gazette in opposition to Fenno's Administration organ, The
United States Gazette, he knew what he was to expect. Fenno's paper was
devoted to the Administration, and to the Secretary of the Treasury in
particular; it was the medium through which Hamilton addressed most of
his messages to the people. Naturally it was of little use to his
enemies; and that Jefferson and his aides had realized the value of an
organ of attack, he divined very quickly. He stated his suspicions to
Washington immediately upon the President's arrival, and warned him to
expect personal assault and abuse.

"There is now every evidence of a strong and admirably organized cabal,"
he added. "And to pull us down they will not stop at abuse of even you,
if failure haunts them. I shall get the most of it, perhaps all. I hope
so, for I am used to it."

He laughed, and quite as light-heartedly as ever; but Washington looked
at him with uneasiness.

"You are a terrible fighter, Hamilton," he said. "I have never seen or
dreamed of your equal. Why not merely oppose to them a massive
resistance? Why be continually on the warpath? They give you a tentative
scratch, and you reply with a blow under the jaw, from which they rise
with a sullener determination to ruin you, than ever. When you are alone
with your pen and the needs of the country, you might have the wisdom of
a thousand years in your brain, and I doubt if at such times you
remember your name; you are one of the greatest, wisest, coolest
statesmen of any age; but the moment you come forth to the open, you are
not so much a political leader as a warlike Scot at the head of his
clan, and readier by far to make a dash into the neighbouring fastness
than to wait for an attack. Are you and Jefferson going to fight
straight through this session?--for if you are, I shall no longer yearn
so much for the repose of Mount Vernon as for the silences of the tomb."

Washington spoke lightly, as he often did when they were alone, and he
had returned from Virginia refreshed; but Hamilton answered
contritely:--

"We both behaved abominably last year, and it was shocking that you
should bear the brunt of it. I'll do my best to control myself in the
Cabinet--although that man rouses all the devil in me; but not to fight
at the head of my party. Oh! Can the leopard change his spots? I fear I
shall die with my back against the wall, sir, and my boots on." "I
haven't the slightest doubt of it. But be careful of giving too free and
constant a play to your passions and your capacity for rancour, or your
character will deteriorate. Tell me," he added abruptly, narrowing his
eyes and fixing Hamilton with a prolonged scrutiny, "do you not feel its
effects already?"

By this time the early, half-unwilling, half-magnetized affection which
the boy in Hamilton had yielded to his Chief had given place to a
consistent admiration for the exalted character, the wisdom, justice,
and self-control of the President of the United States, and to a devoted
attachment. The bond between the two men grew closer every day, and only
the end of all things severed it. Hamilton, therefore, replied as
frankly as if Washington had asked his opinion on the temper of the
country, instead of probing the sacred recesses of his spirit:--

"There have been times when I have sat down and stared into myself with
horror; when I have felt as if sitting in the ruins of my nature. I have
caught myself up again and again, realizing where I was drifting. I have
let a fiend loose within me, and I have turned upon it at times with a
disgust so bitter and a terror so over-mastering that the mildness which
has resulted has made me feel indifferent and even amiable to mine
enemies. Whether this intimate knowledge of myself will save me, God
knows; but when some maddening provocation comes, after reaction has run
its course, I rage more hotly than ever, and only a sense of personal
dignity keeps me from using my fists. I am two-thirds passion, and I am
afraid that in the end it will consume me. I live so intensely, in my
best and my worst! I would give all I possess for your moderation and
balance."

"No, you would not," said Washington. "War is the breath of your
nostrils, and peace would kill you. Not that the poise I have acquired
brings me much peace in these days."

Hamilton, who had spoken dejectedly, but with the deep relief which
every mortal feels in a moment of open and safe confession, sprang to
his feet, and stood on the hearth rug, his eyes sparkling with humour.
"Confess, sir," he cried gaily. "You do not like Jefferson any better
than I do. Fancy him opposite to you day after day, stinging you with
honeyed shafts and opposing you with obstacle after obstacle, while
leering with hypocrisy. Put yourself in my place for an instant, and
blame me if you can."

"Oh," said Washington, with a deep growl of disgust, "o-h-h!" But he
would not discuss his Secretary of State, even with Hamilton.